Cage Eleven - Softcover

Gerry Adams

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1570981310 ISBN 13: 9781570981319

Publisher: Roberts Rinehart Madison, 1997

Synopsis

Gerry Adams, a Sinn Fein activist who led sit-ins, marches, and protests in Northern Ireland, was imprisoned without benefit of a trial. He suffered interrogations and torture during his four years at Long Kesh Prison, most of it in cell block "Cage Eleven." This collection of his essays about prison life was smuggled out of Long Kesh and published by the Irish Republican underground press.

About this title

About the Author:

President of Sinn Fein and TD for Louth, Gerry Adams has been a published writer since 1982. His books have won critical acclaim in many quarters and have been widely translated. His writings range from local history and reminiscence to politics and short stories, and they include the fullest and most authoritative exposition of modern Irish republicanism. Born in West Belfast in 1948 into a family with close ties to both the trade union and republican movements, Gerry Adams is the eldest of ten children. His mother was an articulate and gentle woman, his father a republican activist who had been jailed at the age of sixteen, and he was partly reared by his grandmother, who nurtured in him a love of reading. His childhood, despite its material poverty, he has described in glowing and humorous terms, recollecting golden hours spent playing on the slopes of the mountain behind his home and celebrating the intimate sense of community in the tightly packed streets of working-class West Belfast. But even before leaving school to work as a barman, he had become aware of the inequities and inequalities of life in the north of Ireland. Soon he was engaged in direct action on the issues of housing, unemployment and civil rights. For many years his voice was banned from radio and television by both the British and Irish governments, while commentators and politicians condemned him and all he stood for. But through those years his books made an important contribution to an understanding of the true circumstances of life and politics in the north of Ireland. James F. Clarity of the New York Times described him in the Irish Independent as "A good writer of fiction whose stories are not IRA agitprop but serious art."

Review:

Quite brilliant * Books Ireland * Evocative and often witty cameos of prison life * Times Literary Supplement * When the work of most of the participants in literature's yearly orgy of hype and hysteria has been consigned to history, Adams's slim volume will be alive and well. -- Sunday Press

About this edition

• Publisher: Roberts Rinehart Madison
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1570981310
• ISBN 13: 9781570981319
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 151